Japan's Oki has developed an office chair that, it claims, can jump. And we thought all they were good for is spinning around and skating along on the casters.
Oki's chair, curiously codenamed 'Leopard', employs what the company's boffins call a "robot leg", with the bit for your bum equivalent to the thigh. The calf, ankle and …

Nothing new here.

There've been TV ads around since Jesus was a lad offering "chairs that help you stand up" which seem to work in pretty much the same way. There's a general tendancy to "velour armchair that your granny would like" in the more standard product though.

I wonder what the size of the "techy office chairs for coffin-dodgers" market is?

so if

Notes from the Underground

That's one truly bizarre piece of engineering. Are they suggesting it requires a whole "robotic leg" to carry out a task which seems ideally suited to... a spring? Also, where does the whole "jumping" thing come into it? As far as I can tell, this just sort of bends.

Will the BOFH...

Only in Japan

would a chair be considered inadequate without a shitload of springs and pulleys inside. Wake me when they do a flying, submersible version with Bluetooth remote controlled bum-warming, an MP3 player and a USB socket or three